Laptops for teachers: practices and possibilities

Abstract

The Laptops for Teachers scheme in New Zealand provides teachers whose schools opt into the scheme access to a laptop for their exclusive use. This paper reports on the findings of the three‐year evaluation of the impact of the laptops on secondary teachers’ work. The findings indicate that school leadership has been pivotal to the provision of the technological infrastructure and organisational support needed for teacher use of the laptops. Departmental leadership has been crucial in supporting teacher use of laptops for teaching and learning. Teachers described gains in expertise, indicating that they used the laptop for a range of purposes to support their teaching. These included lesson planning and preparation, and reporting. Where teachers had easy access to a laptop‐plus‐data projector they found that students responded to material that included images and up‐to‐date real‐world examples. Colleagues were identified as the main source of professional development for the use of the laptop for teaching purposes. The findings of the study suggest schools are advised to consider how to support teachers to work collaboratively to share expertise as a way of supporting and extending teacher use of laptops.

Keywords:

• teachers’ laptops
• leadership
• collegial support
• professional development
• evaluation research

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand. The data in this paper were collected as part of the TELA (Laptops for Teachers) Evaluation conducted by researchers at the University of Waikato and funded by the Ministry of Education 2003–2008. The project team included: Bev Cooper, Bronwen Cowie, Mike Forret, Ben Gardiner, Ann Harlow, Alister Jones, Clive McGee, and Thelma Miller.

Notes

1. NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) is New Zealand’s main national qualification for secondary school students and part of the National Qualifications Framework.

2. TKI is a bilingual portal‐plus web community that provides quality‐assured educational material for New Zealand teachers, school managers, and the wider education community.

3. Subsequently the laptops scheme has been extended to teachers who are 0.5 or more full‐time equivalent.